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Valley police agencies train for response to school shootings, while hoping they never witness the bloodshed at a Connecticut elementary school Friday morning.

“Everyone trains for this. It’s not like a select few,’’ said Tommy Thompson, a Phoenix police spokesman.

“We train our people, particularly our first responders,’’ he said, with patrol officers those most likely to arrive first at a school shooting.

Phoenix Police Chief Daniel Garcia assured residents in a press conference Friday, saying law enforcement is prepared to quickly react if a similar tragedy were it to occur in the city.

He said law enforcement everywhere learned new ways to respond to and prevent such mass shootings after the Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, Colo. in 1999.

“It’s a tragic lesson, though.”

He said the department has disrupted potentially tragic acts of violence at local schools in the past, including one earlier this year that involved a 16-year-old girl who took knives to school, intending to do harm to others.

Upon the discovery, the school went into immediate lock down and police arrived quickly and apprehended the girl.

Garcia expressed his condolences to the victims in the Connecticut shooting calling it an “evil act.”

Long before the Connecticut shooting, Tempe Police Chief Tom Ryff scheduled a meeting on Jan. 16 with the principals of public, private, parochial and charter schools about school security procedures.

“It’s a change in our culture. It’s becoming more common,’’ Ryff said. “We have to be prepared for these tragic events. This is the continuing escalation of terrorism activities.

“We’re had Columbine, we’ve had schools, we’ve had theatres, we’ve had shopping malls,’’ he said, with a clear pattern emerging.

“We’ve had these individuals who are targeting people who are leisure, who art not armed,’’ Ryff said.

Tempe police have trained for such “active shooter scenarios’’ at public schools and at Arizona State University, using simulated munitions to create the most realistic scenarios possible, Ryff said.

He said he is concerned about charter schools and other educational facilities who might not be familiar with standard “lockdown’’ procedures used by public schools when crimes are occurring nearby.

Tempe police also train on simulators and the SWAT team is specifically trained to respond to such incidents, said Molly Enright, a Tempe police spokeswoman.

Mesa police Detective Steve Berry said “active shooter’’ training is a regular part of the curriculum at the Mesa Police Academy.

“We at the Mesa police train our officers in the best possible way for the worst possible situations, for the best outcome possible,’’ he said.

Berry said officers know that they will find a chaotic situation, with people yelling and screaming, when responding to a mass shooting at any public place.

One immediate challenge is identifying the victims and the shooter, with the shooter apt to blend in with everyone else.

“When we arrive on scene, our objective is to find the threat and to neutralize the threat,’’ Berry said.

Lyle Mann, executive director of Arizona Peace Officers Standards and Training, said Arizona agencies started training for school shooting after the Columbine shootings in Colorado.

He said supervisors from Colorado traveled to Arizona as part of the training exercises. Local agencies also updated their active shooter training in reaction to the shooting of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson.

“It’s on the front burner of everyone’s mind because of the frequency of what is happeing now,’’ Mann said.

Jared Loughner is serving seven life sentences, six for the people he killed in January 2011 and one for attempting to kill Giffords. He also shot 13 other people.

Mann said he believes Arizona agencies have demonstrated a high level preparedness in their coordinated, multi-agency response to incidents throughout the state.

“I don’t know if everyone is really, truly prepared’’ for a heartbreaking incident such as the Connecticut tragedy, Mann said.

“Those officers, they’re never going to be right,’’ he said.

Berry said police do everything possible to avert such shootings if they uncover plots or threats by deranged or disturbed people.

He said police offer their condolences to the families and survivors of the Connecticut school shootings.

“You are 1 1// weeks before Christmas and you have a tragedy like this one,’’ he said.

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